A selection of the awesomely sweet artwork from "Just Desserts" |
First off let me give a big THANK YOU to Mayra over at Monkeyhouse Toys for letting me fill her walls and shop window full of delectable artwork from a bunch of exceptionally talented artists. I was honestly amazed by the turn out opening night and I don't think I'd be exaggerating by saying I think we had close to 450 people come out to see all of the artists hard work. I showed up half an hour early to set up the refreshment table and there was already 10 people there viewing the artwork, and the number of people only grew as the three hour opening progressed. Granted there were lulls, but the "lull" was that there was maybe only 20 people in the shop before the next rush of 50 or so would show up. Sincerely awesome. Seeing the turn out, the happy faces on the guests and seeing old friends I hadn't seen in years made busting my ass for the last three months totally worth it. (You can view more photos from the event by visiting Monkeyhouse Toys Facebook Page and the Just Desserts album.)
You know what else made busting my butt for the last week heading up to the show worth it? These two! Meet two new additions to my little monster universe. Freddy (Frankenstein) and Igor.
"It's ALIVE!!" 8.5"x 10.5" Gouache 2012 |
Freddy, as you can see in these early sketches took quite a while to get out of my head (there is actually 4 more pages of sketches, I just chose the better looking of them to show). I really wanted to make him look a little like Peter Cushing, but cute. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make Peter Cushing cuddly cute? Lets just say it took over a month to figure out. Igor was MUCH easier. He was pretty much ready to go after the first sketch. I tweeked some of his shapes a bit and gave him a more up to date outfit (and braces). Tee hee, he has a cross between emo and Justin Bieber hair, but his cute piggy nose makes that okay.
Doesn't really look like a young Cushing, but I tried to bite his hair from the old Hammer Films. |
Then. . . because it's me and I can't do anything the easy way, it took two hole days to find a color comp I was happy with. Once it was done though, I got right to work. Thought I'd share an in progress I posted on Facebook.
It took 4 days to get this far. |
In it's fancy frame on the wall. Happy accident that the mat matched the painting exactly! |
So yeah. To wrap up. The gallery opening went off with out a hitch. I managed to get my own piece done just in the nick of time, figured out the front window display, made three sets of felt cookies for the shop (two to sell and one for the window), helped Lori set up the window for her puppets, and managed to not hide in the bathroom because there was too many people around on opening night. All in all, a success.
Now I'm off to send samples of my monster paintings to Halloween Town in Burbank to see if they'll FINALLY let me show some of my work there. I'm not holding my breath.
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